I’m standing on the Saint John Harbour Passage, ready to embark on a kilometre-and-a-half-long walking tour with David Smith of First Nations Storytellers. The walk is short in distance, but lasts two hours because there are Indigenous stories to tell at every corner.

When Smith introduces himself, he tells me his birth name is Elton John Cloud. He’s a Sixties Scoop survivor who was taken from his home in Metepenagiag Miꞌkmaq Nation and placed with a non-Indigenous family when he was one year old. In recent years, Smith has been on a path to reclaiming his Miꞌkmaw identity, which is part of what led him to co-found First Nations Storytellers: to revive that knowledge for himself.

Before we set out, he explains that the Wolastoqiyik, owners of the traditional territory we’re standing on, used the name Menahwesk for what is now called Saint John. For over 5,000 years, before European contact in the 1600s, members of Wabanaki nations (Wolastoqiyik, Miꞌkmaq, Abenaki, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy) would meet in this very harbour to trade. The distant sound of construction echoes in the background as we carry on.

Near a map of the harbour, Smith explains that Bentley Street was once a prominent portage for the Wabanaki to set out on the Wolastoq, also known as the Saint John River. In Wolastoqey Latuwewakon, the language spoken by the Wolastoqiyik, Wolastoq means “the beautiful and bountiful river.” The Wolastoqiyik are “the people of the beautiful and bountiful river.”

A modern transport train rumbles down the nearby tracks. “I didn’t realize how much the Sixties Scoop affected me until I was in the middle of a talking circle, and the idea of not having the language just all of a sudden hit me,” Smith says. Other city tours detail the arrival of French explorer Samuel de Champlain, the incorporation of Saint John by Royal Charter in 1785, and other historical figures. With his tour, he wants to reintroduce people to the Wabanaki way of life and how it was obstructed.

Despite living in Saint John since 2001, Smith was unaware of the city’s importance to the Wabanaki nations. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago, when he started combing through archives that he learned of its significance. As we round the Harbour Passage trail and come to a fork in the road, he points to an unassuming large hill. It’s a traditional burial mound. “Our ancestors wouldn’t bury their dead just anywhere,” he says.

We head to a grassy park and sit on a bench with a  view of the harbour and a city overpass. Smith hands me a beaver pelt, its fur brown, soft and warm. He tells the story of a giant beaver, kopit in Miꞌkmaq, who built a large dam. When the dam started to cause flooding, the people living nearby cried out to Kluscap (a figure in the Wabanaki Oral Tradition who has immense strength and powers) for help. Kluscap tried to reason with Kopit, but to no avail; the beaver insisted that the dam was his way of taking care of his family. So, Kluscap shrank Kopit to the size beavers are today, ensuring they could live in harmony with others.

The story echoes how Smith sees reconciliation: breaking down what was to build something better. It also speaks to the work he sets out to do as a storyteller. “If I can change one person’s mind, that eases the burden on our people.”

First Nations Storytellers — Saint John, NB

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